When the Maine name never comes off Maine players
Men from '76, '86 College World Series teams return to renew bonds with teammates, university
BY STEVE SOLLOWAY
Orono, Maine -- Jeff Plympton moved one 4-foot-high baseball trophy standing on a low table in the corner of the Palmer Lounge. He repositioned a twin that also was presented to a University of Maine baseball team years ago.
Satisfied that nothing else was obstructing a large portrait photo of himself in a Boston Red Sox nylon warmup, he raised his cellphone and clicked the lens of its camera. Call it a throwback selfie.
"My kids would kill me if I didn't take a picture of me," he said, speaking of an adult son working in law enforcement and an adult daughter who is a schoolteacher.
He imagined their smiles at seeing an image of their father from about 25 years ago when he had more hair and the summer sun had not yet etched lines on his face.
Plympton was one mental snapshot among many on this Saturday in May.
The boys who wore Maine across their chests when they ran onto the field at the College World Series in 1976 and again in 1986 had returned to campus for a combined anniversary reunion. They are men now and forever teammates.
"I can tell you the scores of every game we played in the College World Series," said Jack Leggett, a third baseman on the 1976 team.
And he did, recounting the two victories over Auburn and Washington State and the two defeats to Eastern Michigan and Arizona State.
"But the most important thing is the relationships. You never forget your teammates and what you went through together. I look around and it's like I just saw these guys yesterday."
Actually, he had.
The formal social gathering on campus the night before had turned into the more informal time off campus of storytelling and catching up that lasted for hours. It didn't matter that 10 years separated the two teams. Their common bond was the letters that spelled Maine, written in blue, across their chests.
Leggett was one of six seniors on the '76 team and recruited by Jack Butterfield. Dr. John Winkin succeeded Butterfield and took the '76 and '86 teams to Omaha for the College World Series.
The two head coaches and their players raised Maine's profile in college baseball. Fans of the warm-weather teams looked at the Black Bears as curiosities at first: Do you really play baseball in the snow?
Starting in 1976 and ending with the '86 team, Maine reached the CWS six times in 10 years. Respect replaced curiosity. Maine teams weren't just fundamentally sound. The Black Bears were winners.
"We were all New England kids," said Billy Hughes. "So it was cold when we played. So what."
Hughes, a sophomore catcher and first baseman on the '76 team, actually grew up in Oneonta, New York, where winter gave way to spring a bit earlier. He adopted Maine.
"If you had Maine on your chest you were used to dealing with adversity. Maine prepared me for life."
His teammates can say the same.
Leggett, a Bangor native who grew up in Vermont, gained greater recognition in a 22-year-career as Clemson University's head baseball coach. Six times his Clemson teams reached the College World Series.
Leggett is no longer the Clemson coach. But when Maine baseball played at Clemson this spring the players got a refresher course in the rich legacy they share.
Logan Fullmer, a senior pitcher from Lebanon, Pennsylvania listened to Leggett.
"He said he may have coached at Clemson, but he bleeds Maine blue," said Fullmer. "That told me something." The two are generations apart but linked by Maine baseball.
Danny Casals, a first-year third baseman this season and the Black Bears leading hitter, reacted much the same way. Casals is from Miami, Florida and seemingly a world away from Orono and Maine. Talking with Leggett gave him a new perspective on Maine's baseball tradition. Forty and 30 years ago Maine baseball was Maine's team. Maybe New England's college baseball team.
Plympton was from Plainville, Massachusetts, when Winkin showed up and beckoned him. "If you were a good football player you went to (Boston College). If you played baseball it was Maine."
Times were different then, of course. The world outside was bigger. Social media was a landline telephone. ESPN was an idea in 1976 and no longer a novelty in 1986. Maine didn't play its first night game at home until 1987.
"I never knew anything existed beyond New England when I was in high school," said Leggett. "My parents graduated from the University of Maine. This is where I was going to school. I wasn't exposed (to newer athletic facilities). You just dealt with it. Now, it's tough to recruit."
Outside the Palmer Lounge in the Mahaney Clubhouse, Maine's baseball team continued to stretch and warm up on the turf. It was a rare day of brilliant sunshine. The temperature was rising well into the high 70s. The Black Bears and visiting Stony Brook University were about to play a doubleheader.
More players from Maine's past were arriving. Tony DiBiase, the senior first baseman from Portland and leading hitter on the '76 team, spotted Leggett and Ed Flaherty, who has coached numerous University of Southern Maine teams to the NCAA playoffs and two NCAA Division III championships.
"Now there's baseball royalty," said DiBiase, raising his voice and smiling. He is still coaching high school baseball and has for some 40 years.
Across the room was more royalty: Carl "Stump" Merrill. The native Mainer was Winkin's assistant on the '76 team before moving to the New York Yankees' organization in 1978 to manage the West Haven Yankees of the Eastern League. That started a 26-year career of managing and coaching Yankees' teams, including parts of two seasons (1990-91) as manager of the Yankees.
"You have an intense loyalty with each other," said DiBiase. "And it's fun as anything to rekindle the friendships."
Steve Loubier, a junior pitcher on the '86 team and from South Portland, brought his daughter, Jenny, who just completed her first year at UMaine, and his son Trevor, a first-year ballplayer at Gorham High, outside Portland.
They listened quietly to the stories, maybe sometimes not quite believing what they were hearing. They did understand their father's depth of emotions when he talked about wearing the Maine uniform.
"At the time I was playing, people recognized us," said Loubier. "I don't think they put us a on a pedestal but being a Maine baseball player made us stand apart. I spent five years in the minor leagues (San Diego Padres) and if I mentioned I (played at Maine) it got a reaction."
The reactions were positive, tinged with that ever-present wonder. You can play baseball in Maine?
Loubier, Plympton, and seven of their teammates were drafted by major league teams, not including Mike Bordick, the shortstop who was signed as a free agent by the Oakland A's. Bordick played 13 seasons in the big leagues, far longer than the others. Bordick was unable to attend the reunion.
The players on the '86 team were the heartbreak kids. They lost their first two games and went home early. In the first game, the Black Bears played eventual champion Arizona and led, 7-0. Arizona rallied and won, 8-7, with a two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth.
Spirits were crushed in the Maine dugout.
"Wink always told us, the best thing in baseball was winning. The second best thing was losing because it was still baseball," said Loubier in a Maine Sunday Telegram column five years ago.
He and his teammates can put the defeat into perspective today. Thirty years ago it was difficult but they understood they had to move on quickly.
With the seven-run lead, Winkin had decided to relieve starting pitcher Scott Morse, wanting to save his arm for more work in the CWS. Marc Powers, a junior bullpen ace from Portland, came into the game. Arizona started scoring runs and got right back in it.
"One inning," said Powers. "It was the one inning I'd love to have back. I know I'd get three outs."
He grinned. One inning wasn't keeping him away from his teammates on this Saturday. They had his back then and now, understanding that success or failure rides with every pitch. That doesn't stop them from digging up a 30-year-old memory, even if it's now accompanied by good-natured ribbing and laughter.
"The stories are familiar," said Leggett. "But the home runs are always longer. The power is always greater."
Before Maine took the field to play Stony Brook, the players were introduced individually, by team. Leggett and Plympton and Loubier and the rest of the 30-some men walked with pride to the third base foul line. Merrill doffed his cap with the emphasis of a man of accomplishment. His was a gesture for all of them.
In the dugout, young Danny Casals' head swiveled as he looked from one player to the next. Logan Fullmer started the first game and was the winning pitcher. It was a day to remember.
-UMaine-
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New contributor Steve Solloway wrote the stories behind the stories of University of Maine student athletes, teams, and coaches for more than 25 years as the featured sports columnist of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. From men's basketball standout Rick Carlisle to football's Trevor Bates and the special legacy of wearing No. 9. From the freshman season of Cindy Blodgett and Maine's first appearance in the NCAA women's basketball tournament to the inspiring story of Ashley Drew's fight to beat cystic fibrosis and her fierce pride in Maine sports.
